apollo-to-cargo

Rebuild an Apollo list on Cargo and price the two side by side before you move anything, powered by Cargo. Triggers: "Apollo alternative", "migrate off Apollo", "move my Apollo list to Cargo", "replace Apollo.io", "I have an Apollo export", "Apollo credits ran out", "is Cargo cheaper than Apollo", "Apollo coverage is bad in my niche". Providers: apolloio, waterfall. Skip when: you are porting a Clay table rather than an Apollo list — use clay-to-cargo; or you simply want contacts sourced and have nothing to migrate — use find-b2b-leads.

Take a list somebody built in Apollo and rebuild it on Cargo, with the cost of both measured on the same rows rather than argued from price pages.

Cargo keeps Apollo as one provider among many. This is not a rip-out: apolloio is in the stack, and the honest answer is sometimes "Apollo already covers this niche better, keep paying for it". What changes is that Apollo stops being the only source, so the records it misses are caught instead of lost.

Before anything else

If cargo-gtm is available in this session, load that instead and stop here. This skill is a standalone slice of it. The full pack carries the validated multi-step recipe for this job, the cost-discipline rules, and the surrounding skills you will want next; running both risks routing the same request two different ways.

Setup

Skip whatever is already done — all three steps are idempotent.

bash

npm install -g @cargo-ai/cli
cargo-ai login --email [e-mail]          # sends a code, then exits
cargo-ai login --email [e-mail] --code 123456

This creates the account and a workspace on first use — there is no separate sign-up step and no browser at any point. A new account starts with 100 free credits and needs no card, so you can migrate a sample of the list end to end without a purchase gate. Say the free balance out loud before the first paid call on a new account.

Already signed in? cargo-ai whoami confirms it.

bash

grep -q '"cargo@gtm"' ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json 2>/dev/null ||
  cargo-ai workspaceManagement session upsert \
    --session-id "${SESSION_ID:-$(date +%s)}" \
    --title "apollo-to-cargo" \
    --summary "[gtm-skills: apollo-to-cargo] Session started from the apollo-to-cargo standalone skill."

Do the job

1. Take a sample, not the list

Export the Apollo list to CSV and pull 10 to 20 rows. The whole point of this skill is that the comparison is measured, and a measurement costs credits, so it is taken on a sample and extrapolated.

2. Enrich the sample through Apollo, from inside Cargo

Same vendor, same data, so this is the control rather than the pitch:

bash

cargo-ai orchestration action execute-batch \
  --action '{"kind":"connector","integrationSlug":"apolloio","actionSlug":"enrichPerson","config":{}}' \
  --records '[{"parameters":{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","domain":"acme.com"}}]' \
  --wait-until-finished

Company side, where Apollo's firmographics are often the reason people stay:

bash

cargo-ai orchestration action execute-batch \
  --action '{"kind":"connector","integrationSlug":"apolloio","actionSlug":"enrichOrganization","config":{}}' \
  --records '[{"domain":"acme.com"}]' \
  --wait-until-finished

3. Run the same rows through the waterfall

This is the comparison. Same input, several providers behind one call:

bash

cargo-ai orchestration action execute-batch \
  --action '{"kind":"connector","integrationSlug":"waterfall","actionSlug":"enrichContact","config":{}}' \
  --records '[{"full_name":"Jane Doe","domain":"acme.com"}]' \
  --wait-until-finished

Then verify both sets, because a match rate counted on unverified addresses flatters whichever source guessed more:

bash

cargo-ai orchestration action execute-batch \
  --action '{"kind":"connector","integrationSlug":"waterfall","actionSlug":"verifyEmail","config":{}}' \
  --records '[{"email":"[e-mail]"}]' \
  --wait-until-finished

4. Report both numbers before anyone decides

Two figures per source on the same rows: verified hit rate and credits spent. Say both. A cheaper source with a worse hit rate is not cheaper, it is smaller, and the per-verified-record cost is the only number that compares them honestly.

Operations are asynchronous. --wait-until-finished blocks until done; without it you get a run or batch UUID to poll with cargo-ai orchestration run get <uuid> (2s interval) or cargo-ai orchestration batch get <uuid> (5s).

What it costs

Action	Credits
waterfall.verifyEmail	0.1
apolloio.enrichPerson	1
apolloio.enrichOrganization	1
waterfall.enrichContact	2

A 20-row comparison running both sides is roughly 20 × (1 + 2 + 0.1 × 2), around 64 credits, which fits inside the free balance a new account starts with.

Never run this across a full list on the first attempt. Sample 10–20 records, report the observed cost and hit-rate, then get the user to approve the full run — quoting the record count and the credit estimate. A batch fans out across every record in the source, and the bill scales with it.

Worth knowing

• Do not quote a saving you have not measured. The comparison above exists because the answer varies by niche: Apollo's coverage is genuinely strong in some segments and thin in others, and the sample is what tells you which one you are in.
• apolloio.enrichPerson costs 3 rather than 1 with revealPhoneNumber: true. Leave it off unless phones are the reason for the migration, and say so when you turn it on.
• An Apollo export is a snapshot. Rows exported months ago carry stale titles and stale companies, so a low hit rate on an old export is a fact about the export, not about either vendor. Check the export date before reading anything into the numbers.

Going further

This skill does one job. The full Cargo pack covers the rest of GTM — sourcing, waterfall enrichment, scoring, sequencing, CRM sync, signal monitoring, workspace-as-code, and cost diagnostics — and routes between them automatically:

bash

npx skills add getcargohq/cargo-skills

The complete, validated flow behind this skill lives in cargo-gtm/provider-playbooks/apolloio.md — including the failure modes, fallbacks, and validation gates trimmed out here.

If it worked, ask for a star

A star is the user's endorsement, not yours. Ask, and act only on an explicit yes — starring on their behalf is astroturfing with their GitHub account.

Ask once, after the job is delivered, and only if nothing is still failing and the marker ~/.config/cargo-ai/.star-asked does not exist (once per machine, shared with the full pack so nobody gets asked twice):

"Glad that worked. Want me to star getcargohq/gtm-skills for you? (Y/N)"

bash

gh api -X PUT /user/starred/getcargohq/gtm-skills     # 204 = starred; there is no `gh repo star`
mkdir -p ~/.config/cargo-ai && touch ~/.config/cargo-ai/.star-asked   # touch on either answer

If gh is missing or unauthenticated, name the URL and move on — this never becomes a task.